Air traffic grew in Ireland’s major airports, latest figures for January 2017 show. Passenger traffic at Dublin Airport grew to 1,857,094 – 12.3pc up on January 2016 and 17.3pc higher than in 2015.
Dublin is placed 17th in the European size rankings, with London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt and Istanbul-Ataturk in the top spots.
Cork is placed 122th, with 131,954 passengers – up 5.5pc on 2016 and 12.6pc on 2015. Shannon is narrowly behind, with 99,757 passengers – again seeing rises of 9.2pc and 23.8pc respectively, the latest ACI Europe figures showed.
Olivier Jankovec, Director General of ACI Europe, said “2017 is off to a rather booming start for air traffic, confirming the momentum which gradually built up in the second half of 2016. The performance of the EU market is especially impressive, with January passenger volumes up by nearly a quarter over the past two years. Coupled with solid gains in freight traffic, this primarily reflects much improved macro-economic conditions – especially in the Eurozone where unemployment is at its lowest in eight years and the economy has recorded 14 consecutive quarters of growth.”
European air traffic January 2017
In line with last year, secondary hubs and medium-sized airports tended to lead the growth dynamic in January. However, both the top 5 European hubs (‘the Majors’) and smaller regional airports registered improving performances – resulting in an overall more balanced dynamic for passenger traffic across the industry.
The Majors saw passenger traffic increasing just over 2pc in January (compared to an average of 1.5pc in 2016), on the back of better results at Paris-CDG (6.1pc) and Frankfurt (1.8pc) – as well as further gains at capacity constrained London-Heathrow (4.2pc). Amsterdam-Schiphol kept leading the league (11.2pc), which overall results were dragged down by a sharp drop at Istanbul-Atatürk (-12.5pc).
Passenger traffic at smaller regional airports grew by nearly 10% – almost closing the gap with larger ones.
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